Chapter 785: Unbent
The curse, now fully condensed into an armored man, struck without wasted movement.
Mana flared from his palm, forcing students into choking stupors. They snapped their arms over their eyes before the blinding light seared them. Any appreciation for the drifting feathers and the promise of Adam’s sufferings was gone now—only a dread that made their stomachs churn and their legs wobble like jelly remained in their hunched forms.
The youngest threw themselves on the wooden platform, the dull thud drowned by their cries. They buried their faces into the starry fabric as if its dark tint could shield them from the light.
The oldest stood their ground, if barely. Those adept at dark magic wreathed their eyes in shadows, while others used similar means to barely peer through the light. But they fared no better than the younger ones. The dread was shared, not through sight, but through the feeling of Diane’s colossal mana rumbling with restless abandon.
Adam felt it more than any of them ever could. Jaw clenched, hissing through his teeth, his sky-blue eyes locked on the light that had turned into a brilliant sword aimed at his heart. Where it passed, the air wept haunting whistles worse than the wails of haunted souls.
How was he to dispel that abomination of a curse?
No, he had to. No matter the curse’s effects, he couldn’t let it strike him.
Icy sweat beaded on his forehead as the sword cleaved through his personal space. His Spellbinding Aegis erupted with a furious thump of his heart. Without surprise, the sword tip pierced the protective layer, vaporising it into sky-blue mist on contact.
This was what he had been waiting for.
His left fist blurred upwards, his right downward. They crashed on the blade, an inch before it impaled his chest. His muscles shrieked, corded fibers, reinforced with mana, bulging through fair skin. A tremor rocked the blade as it pressed forward, its momentum slightly slowed but unbroken.
It would pierce through in half a heartbeat.
Lips pursed, teeth clenched, veins pulsing, and mana circuits roaring with his visceral growl, his mana erupted like a geyser. Threads wove into the first spell he had learned, the one he knew best—mana hands.
Three wrapped around the blade, sizzling and evaporating in their desperate attempt to stop it. Another half a heartbeat. That’s what they would buy him. He had to make it count.
He forced his squinted eyes wide open. The blade appeared, not as a blinding curse, but as components. Mana wove tight patterns he didn’t understand everywhere. It felt like a wall-sized artwork, in which he had to find a needle-sized hole faster than he could breathe.
Impossible.
The hands sizzled out of existence, the mana consumed. His knuckles bled from visible bones, and the blade slipped through.
Damn it!
In the microsecond before the tip pierced flesh, he did what he always had—not going down without a fight.
BOOM
His mana burst outward in an elemental hurricane of pure doom. Gravity went wild, down becoming up, up becoming left, and left becoming right. Students crashed against the ceiling and the walls, but he had no time to spare them a glance. Blue flames crackled to life, followed by the blaze of magma. Windows shattered in their frames when lightning bolts roared, and the entire building shook when vibrations distorted half the classroom. Shadow claws raked at the blade, and even a halberd of pure light struck at it.
And yet, the sword didn’t even flinch under the cataclysmic onslaught. Gravity couldn’t throw it off course, vibrations failed to destabilise it, and the rest shattered against mana hundreds of times denser.
Everything was vain, Diane’s training—a joke. Yet, defeat didn’t twist his features. He didn’t care anymore, would not be cursed again. He would do it. As for the students, they could just blame Diane.
As the sword’s searing tip kissed his chest, he condensed an orb of pure plasma. Dense was its core, and denser were the gravity and vibrations. Atoms were forced closer, merging in the split second before the curse could take root in his heart.
And when they did... Diane’s eyes widened in horror. She waved her hand urgently, engulfing every student and coating the class in a shimmering veil before...
BOOM
The energy created by atomic fusion burst outward with a catastrophic roar. Flames over a hundred million degrees gushed out with raving hunger. They devoured the sword from every angle. It twitched this time as light began to bleed like ink on a canvas, its invisible weakness melting, the mana unravelled on a molecular level.
The shockwave spread, flames crashing against Diane’s veils of light like a tsunami. The barrier endured, protecting students, desks, and walls. But when the disoriented teenager thought it was over, the sphere of plasma pulsed again.
From the safety of Diane’s barrier, they watched in strangled horror as another explosion rocked the classroom, then another.
The eyes of the winged man, the source of the curse, blazed under his visor, not with judgment this time, but recognition as the third blast washed him away in a sea of flickering motes. And once the energy finally dissipated, nothing of it remained but the memory of a curse that had terrorised every student.
Now, they were more terrified by Adam’s spell. How could it be this powerful when he was weak? A question Diane answered in a split second.
She walked through the overheated air, the scent of ozone clinging to her broad robes. "He created an artificial star," she murmured in the deafening silence, realising that Adam’s secrets ran much deeper than she had believed.
Aside from dark smoke spiralling everywhere, her barrier had protected the classroom. The students were sound too. Shaken beyond words but safe. She sighed through her bitten lip. "How do I explain to Haldris that a student blew himself up in my class?"
Yet, she halted at a collapsed section of the platform—where Adam had stood. Not burned, not vaporised, just collapsed with debris covering the ground. Her eyes widened when a shadowy hand burst from underneath the jagged planks, followed by a blackened bare torso. Two sky-blue eyes locked onto her with predatory lights, hair coated in dust cascading around them.
"Explain why you cast magus curses at full force at your students while calling it training first." Adam’s voice resounded from singed windpipe, rough and unpleasant to the ear.
"How did you..." She rushed to the wooden planks. They had cracked. Not from fire, but pressure. Her eyes darted to the ground barrier, realisation striking at her like a hammer when she saw impossible hairline cracks forming a man-sized circle in this place alone. "Gravity. You forced the blast away. But the heat should’ve killed you."
"Finish the job if you’re so disappointed. I’m done with class for today." Adam scoffed as he rose to his full height, legs condensing from shadows through the cracked barrier. He walked past Diane, naked, wounded, but unbent. "And I dare you to deduct points for some bullshit like endangering fellow students. You are the danger."
A brow raised, she watched Adam slam the door without answering. Then, she shrugged and clapped as her barrier faded. "What are you all dawdling for? Resume training."
Her voice awakened the oldest ones from their stupor. Brad rushed at her instantly, cold sweat trickling down his brow. "W-What were those blasts, and... and your curse, teacher?"
When the other students crowded her, she rolled her eyes and explained the blasts. Then, she chuckled. "My curse is nothing much. Just a thorn planted in the heart that sends jolts of searing pain with each beat. It slowly turns the heart to crystal until it shatters into light. I’m sure I lowered its speed to the bare minimum, though."
The students glared at her, and she sighed. "I’ll reward him the one hundred points for dispelling the curse. Happy? Go train now." She waved her hand dismissively, her eyes still locked on the door.
But Jonathan wasn’t done. He walked to the debris, raising plank after plank. How did Adam survive the heat? It obsessed him. He needed an answer. And he found it when his hand met the ground. Not the ground, but a half-dissipated solid lump of shadows still bubbling like tar. "The planks!" His eyes widened. Adam hadn’t protected himself in the blinding blast, but the planks. All so they could protect the shadow he had hidden in.
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AN: Longer Chapter and done with this lesson.
AN2 (same 50 Chapter later): Feeling down about this month’s stats (around 75$ only, so much less after processing fees and conversion to euros... around 3 daily collections, etc...).
To be honest, I don’t know what prevents the book from doing well, which is depressing considering all the effort and love I put into the story, especially in avoiding clunky info dumps, classic rinse and repeat, generic action scenes, or random power-up tropes.
If you have any ideas, even if it is what you hate most or simply what you’ve enjoyed so far, please share them with me.